Satellites' Collision Creates More Orbiting Space Debris

On Wednesday, a Russian and American satellite in space ran into each other head on. Both weighed more than half a ton and were traveling at 17,500 miles an hour. It was the first time there’s been such a collision, which sent hundreds of pieces of debris into space, and possibly into the orbit of other spacecraft, including the Hubble telescope. Astronomer Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is an analyst of the space program.

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